Said, Edward W. 1935-2003

views updated

SAID, Edward W. 1935-2003

PERSONAL: Surname is pronounced "sa-eed"; born November 1, 1935, in Jerusalem, Palestine; immigrated to United States, 1951; died of leukemia, September 25, 2003; son of Wadie A. (businessman) and Hilda (Musa) Said; married second wife, Mariam Cortas, December 15, 1970; children: Wadie, Najla. Education: Princeton University, A.B., 1957; Harvard University, A.M., 1960, Ph.D., 1964. Religion: Anglican. Hobbies and other interests: Playing piano.

CAREER: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, tutor in history and literature, 1961-63; Columbia University, New York, NY, instructor, 1963-65, assistant professor, 1965-68, associate professor of English, 1968-70, professor of English and comparative literature, 1970-77, Parr professor of English and comparative literature, 1977-89, Old Dominion Foundation professor of humanities, 1989-91, university professor, 1992-2002, chair of doctoral program in comparative literature. Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, Urbana, fellow, 1967-68; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, visiting associate professor of comparative literature, summer, 1968, and visiting professor of comparative literature, winter, 1974; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, fellow, 1975-76; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, Christian Gauss lecturer in criticism, spring, 1977; Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, visiting professor of humanities, spring, 1979; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, Carpenter professor, 1983; Yale University, New Haven, CT, visiting professor, fall, 1985; University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, Northrop Frye visiting professor, fall, 1986. Member of Palestine National Council, 1977-91.

MEMBER: United Nations Organizations (consultant, 1982-83), American University of Beirut (international advisory board, 2001-02); American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society (2000), Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Modern Language Association (president, 1999), Institute of Arab Studies (chairman of the board, 1980-83), American Comparative Literature Association, PEN (executive board member, 1988-98), Association of Arab-American University Graduates (vice president, 1971; member of board, 1972), New York Council on Foreign Relations, New York Institute for the Humanities, New York State Council for the Humanities (executive board), Century Association, Phi Beta Kappa

AWARDS, HONORS: Woodrow Wilson fellowship, Harvard University, 1958; Bowdoin Prize, Harvard University, 1963; Center for Advanced Study, University of Illinois, fellowship, 1967-68; Guggenheim fellowship, 1972-73; Lionel Trilling Awards, Columbia University, 1976 and 1994, for Beginnings; National Endowment for the Humanities senior fellowship, 1981; Rene Wellek Award in literary theory, American Comparative Literature Association, for The World, the Text, and the Critic, 1984; Janet Lee Stevens Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1987; Picasso Medal, 1994; Nonino Award, 1996; Sultan Owais Prize for Cultural Achievement, 1998; Spinoza Prize, 1999; Anisfeld-Wolf Book Award, 1999; Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2000; National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, for Orientalism; New Yorker Award for nonfiction, 2000, for Out of Place; Lifetime Achievement Award, Lannan Foundation, 2001.

WRITINGS:

Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1966.

Beginnings: Intention and Method, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1975.

Orientalism, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1978.

The Question of Palestine, Times Books (New York, NY), 1979, new edition, with new introduction and epilogue, Vintage (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor) Literature and Society, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1980.

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1981, revised edition, Vintage (New York, NY), 1997.

The World, the Text, and the Critic, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1983.

(Author of foreword) Raymond Schwab, Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680-1880, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1984.

After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, photographs by Jean Mohr, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1986.

(Author of foreword) Johannes Fabian, Language and Colonial Power: The Appropriation of Swahili in the Former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1986.

(Editor and author of introduction) Rudyard Kipling, Kim, Penguin (New York, NY), 1987.

(Editor, with Christopher Hitchens) Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, Verso, 1988.

(Author of foreword) Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck, editors, Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis Reader, Olive Branch Press, 1991.

Musical Elaborations, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

(Author of foreword) Richard Poirier, The Performing Self: Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life, Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ), 1992.

Culture and Imperialism, Knopf (New York, NY), 1993.

Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1994.

The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian, Common Courage Press (Monroe, ME), 1994.

The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1994.

Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, with a preface by Christopher Hitchens, Vintage (New York, NY), 1995.

(Author of preface) Hanna Mikhail, Politics and Revelation: Mawardi and After, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1995.

Out of Place: A Memoir, Knopf (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Sheena Wagstaff) Mona Hatoum: The Entire World As a Foreign Land (essays), Tate Gallery (London, England), 2000.

Edward Said Reader, edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin, Vintage (New York, NY), 2000.

End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2000.

Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, edited by Gauri Viswanathan, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Daniel Barenboim) Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2002.

Freud and the Non-European, introduction by Christopher Bollas, response by Jacqueline Rose, Verso (New York, NY), 2003.

(With David Barsamian) Culture and Resistance: Conversations, South End Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map, Pantheon (New York, NY), 2004.

Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author or editor of pamphlets: coeditor with Fuad Suleiman of The Arabs Today: Alternatives for Tomorrow, Forum Associates, 1973; coauthor with Daniel Berrigan and Israel Shahak of Arabs and Jews: Possibility of Concord, Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), 1974; coauthor with Ibrahim Abu-Lughod of Two Studies on the Palestinians Today and American Policy, AAUG, 1976; author of Reaction and Counter-Revolution in the Contemporary Arab World, AAUG, 1978, and The Palestine Question and the American Context, Institute for Palestine Studies, 1979; author, with others, of A Profile of the Palestinian People, Palestine Human Rights Campaign, 1983. Music critic for Nation. Contributor to anthologies; contributor of articles and reviews to Kenyon Review, Nation, New York Times, Grand Street, New Statesman, London Review of Books, Raritan, Le Monde Diplomatique, and other periodicals; contributor to Arabic-language newspapers in the Middle East and England.

SIDELIGHTS: A professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and an influential and provocative cultural critic until his untimely death in 2003, Edward W. Said remains best known to the general public as an astute commentator on Middle Eastern affairs and as a vocal and respected proponent of Palestinian national rights. His editorials on the Middle East appeared in major newspapers worldwide throughout his career, and he frequently appeared on national television news programs and talk shows. Writing in Time magazine, Robert Hughes described Said as one of American academia's "few public intellectuals—men or women whose views carry weight with general readers off-campus." Israel Studies contributor Alon Confino called Said "one of the premier political intellectuals of his generation, whose professional work has been fundamental to unmasking narratives of power and authority." Noting that Said gained stature as "a critic of Western power and its influence upon international politics and culture," Free Inquiry writer Norm Allen explained in Said's obituary that his 1978 book Orientalism "led to his remarkable career" as an advocate not only of the Palestinian people, but also of people in "India, Africa, Australia, and the Caribbean."

A Palestinian-American born in Jerusalem, Said grew up primarily in Cairo, Egypt, where his father owned a prosperous stationery business. The Said family also owned property in Jerusalem and Lebanon, but after the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-48 they were permanently exiled from Palestine. Said became one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were made refugees during that and subsequent wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Unlike those of most refugees, however, Said's family was well to do, and he was educated at an exclusive private school in Cairo before completing his formal education in the United States.

A member of the Palestine National Council (P.N.C.), the Palestinians' parliament in exile, from 1977 to 1991, Said met many times with Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) chairman Yasir Arafat, and drafted the English version of the Palestinian declaration of statehood issued by the P.N.C. in 1988. While adamant in ascribing the persistence of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute to Israel's refusal to recognize Palestinian national rights, Said was widely regarded as a moderate; he was, Eqbal Ahmad reported in the Nation, "the first Palestinian writer to argue for the necessity of a full-scale political encounter between the Jews and the Palestinians 'whose past and future tie them inexorably together.'"

Said's unwavering advocacy of Palestinian rights did not prevented Said from criticizing Palestinian policies and leadership, however, and he was critical of the deals struck between the Palestinian authority and the Israeli government allowing for limited Palestinian autonomy in the Gaza Strip and portions of the West Bank in the early 1990s. He contended that the agreements gave the Palestinians too little authority over their own affairs while leaving Israel at liberty to pursue annexation of the bulk of the West Bank. In the Nation he lambasted the Palestinian authority leadership, and particularly Arafat, for following "undemocratic methods" in concluding agreements with Israel behind the backs of Palestinian representatives who were involved, with his blessing, in ongoing negotiations with Israeli authorities. The traditional Palestinian authority leadership, Said argued, not only displayed "incompetence and corruption," but failed "to mobilize the vast potential of its own people," and hence should "step aside." Said was also highly critical of the oppressiveness of other Middle Eastern regimes. While he denounced the United States' role in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, he was equally outspoken in condemning the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, whom he described in a New Statesman interview as "an appalling and dreadful despot."

While Said's writings cover a variety of topics, all evince a concern with the relationships between language and power. Several of Said's books and many of his shorter writings deal directly with the Palestinian issue. In The Question of Palestine, first published in 1979, he traces the history of the Palestinians and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and argues that supporters of Israeli policies have distorted the record to make Palestinian efforts to obtain statehood appear irrational, evil, and unjustifiable. While Walter Laqueur, in the New Republic, dismissed the book as "another routine attack on Zionism and its dire consequences," in the New York Times Christopher Lehmann-Haupt suggested that The Question of Palestine "is as good a place as any for a Westerner to begin an attempt to understand" the Palestinian viewpoint. Said's 1988 anthology, Blaming the Victims, coedited with journalist Christopher Hitchens, presents a collection of studies exposing and analyzing cases of media misrepresentation of the Palestinian case. After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, published in 1986, combines a meditative essay by Said with photographs of Palestinians taken by Swiss photographer Jean Mohr. In a review in the Nation, Lesley Hazleton described After the Last Sky as "an extended voyage through the mind of exile" and "a beautifully written exploration of Palestinian identity and alienation."

Perhaps Said's most influential work, Orientalism examines European and U.S. representations of the peoples and societies of the Middle East. The author argues that traditional Western scholarship on the region, as well as popular and literary depictions of the Middle East, has created a stereotype of its cultures as irrational, unchanging, violent, and morally degenerate. Once rooted in Western perception, this stereotype has colored subsequent representations of the area, influencing the work of journalists, imaginative writers, and even scholars. Moreover, Said asserts, negative stereotypes of the "Orient" and its peoples have long been exploited to justify Western economic and political domination of the Middle East, and they continue to inform both popular attitudes and public policy toward the region.

Some Orientalist scholars were at first highly critical of Said's thesis. Bernard Lewis, in the New York Review of Books, charged him with lodging "reckless accusations" and making "arbitrary" and "capricious" use of information, while Albert Hourani, in a generally favorable review in the same publication, suggested that Said goes too far in generalizing about Orientalist scholars. However, John Leonard, writing in the New York Times, termed Said's argument "not merely persuasive, but conclusive." In an essay for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, John Kucich indicated that while Orientalism was "vigorously and sometimes abusively attacked by Islamic and Arabist specialists," it was also "welcomed by many specialists in related fields … as well as by those more generally interested in theories of representation, in the new historicism, or in imperialism itself." Orientalism quickly became a standard text in courses on post-modern literary theory and cultural studies, Scott Sherman describing the work in Publishers Weekly as "among the most influential works of critical theory in the postwar period."

Culture and Imperialism expands on the themes of Orientalism, "to describe," as Said states in the book, "a more general pattern of relationships between the modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories." In this study, published in 1993, Said explores the relationship between imperialism, as a defining feature of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western culture, and Western art, particularly the novel. He also discusses the "culture of resistance," rejecting "nativism" or separatist nationalism in favor of "a more integrative view of human community and human liberation." Though characterizing the book as "dense, allusive … occasionally brilliant, often vexing and consistently provocative," Michiko Kakutani complained in the New York Times of its "hectoring tone" and worried that its author may be "trying to shoehorn examples into a rigid theoretical structure." Conversely, Robert Hughes, writing in Time, called Culture and Imperialism "the product of a culturally hypersaturated mind, moving between art and politics, showing how they do or might intermesh—but never with the coarse ideological reductiveness of argument so common in America nowadays." Michael Gorra in the New York Times Book Review praised Said's analysis of the complex interrelationships between imperialism and resistance. Culture and Imperialism, Gorra concluded, provides an "urgently needed synthesis of the work in a field that, more than any other critic, Edward W. Said has himself defined."

Notwithstanding his considerable output of book-length studies, Said's journalism and essays were perhaps his most influential writings, and the most noted have been published in collections. The World, the Text, and the Critic, according to Kucich, attempts "to synthesize the two seemingly disparate bodies of [Said's] writing—that on literature and that on the Middle East." At the center of this synthesis lies Said's concept of "antithetical knowledge": the ability of a reader to counteract the constraints of orthodox thinking through a critical awareness of his or her own methods, interests, and cultural assumptions. Irwin Ehrenpreis, in the New York Review of Books, accused Said of inaccuracy and over-generalization in developing his arguments. In contrast, Voice Literary Supplement contributor Walter Kendrick found the essays partially successful, noting that "the diagnosis they offer" regarding the state of literary criticism in the late twentieth century "is accurate."

Both The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After and Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays assemble Said's writings on politics and literature. In a New York Times Book Review piece on The End of the Peace Process, Ethan Bronner called Said "one of the world's most eloquent advocates of the Palestinian cause," adding: "Few are as consistently devastating or as learned as Said in their condemnations." A Publishers Weekly correspondent summarized the book as "a potent analysis—one that refuses to follow a party line—of the complexities and stark realities of Middle Eastern politics." In his review, Bronner concluded of Said: "His voice, as heard in these essays, is deep, rich and courageous in what is often a scripted and dishonest international dispute." A Kirkus Reviews critic, reviewing Reflections on Exile, characterized Said as "one of the boldest and most articulate cultural theorists" of the late twentieth century, adding that the collection is "a fascinating exploration of post-colonialism as seen through the eyes of its progenitor."

Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said collects interviews and panel discussions from the years 1976-2000. The book covers a wide range of topics, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the peace process, the Gulf War, Middle East politics, literary criticism, cultural theory, opera, and travel drawn from a variety of publications, both in the United States and abroad. The book's editor, according to Library Journal reviewer Nader Entessar, "has captured Said's lifelong commitment to scholarship and political activism." A Publishers Weekly contributor noted, "These interviews trace [Said's] thoughtful perspectives and his unflinching candor about Middle Eastern politics." According to this reviewer, readers "interested in an overview of Said's ideas and oeuvre should start with this book." Entessar concluded of Power, Politics, and Culture that as an introduction to the writer's work, it "demonstrates the depth and breadth of Said's scholarship."

In the early 1990s Said was diagnosed with a virulent form of leukemia and began chemotherapy and other treatments in a battle that he would ultimately lose. This confrontation with his imminent mortality inspired him to write Out of Place: A Memoir. Even before the book's release, Said was attacked by critics, including Commentary essayist Justus Reid Weiner, who without having read the book accused Said of falsifying his background in order to make his sufferings as an expatriate more dramatic. In fact, when Out of Place was released, it revealed not only a truthful account of Said's peripatetic childhood, but also offered a candid account of his feelings of alienation, based not on physical suffering but on intellectual confusion about his place in the world. Confino wrote in Israel Studies: "A constant property links young Edward with the adult Said: the notion of out of placeness, of exile, as changeless, permanent features of his personality that existed before he could have known what the future had in store for him. Said thus becomes the intellectual par excellence, whose exile is not simply metaphoric, but both an objective reality (exiled from Palestine) and a subjective feeling (permanently out of place)."

Nation correspondent Ammiel Alcalay wrote of Out of Place: "Much as Zola galvanized public opinion in the Dreyfus affair, Said has lifted the Palestinian cause out of the apologetic and beleaguered discourse in which it had been embedded, to lend it universal dimensions. With the publication of Out of Place, these intellectual journeys and endeavors can finally be considered against the backdrop of other physical movements and psychological trials, as Said reaches back to recall a life lived before coming to such public, political consciousness." In the New York Times Book Review, Ian Buruma observed that "Said's efforts on behalf of Palestinians are admirable. But the hero emerging from his memoir is not the Palestinian activist so much as the alienated intellectual…. One finishes his book with the strong impression that Said presses the suffering of the Palestinian people into the service of his own credentials as an intellectual hero." Conversely, Confino concluded: "As a Palestinian, Said has written a testimony more eloquent than all his political writing; the personal is often more powerful than the purely political…. By attempting harder than most intellectuals to reflect on the very process of reflection, Said's memoir has movingly illuminated the composite and ambiguous condition of the modern intellectual who attempts to represent and explain the self while maintaining a vocation for the art of representing and explaining the society."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Issues Criticism, Volume 2, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1984.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 67: Modern American Critics since 1955, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

Parry, Benita, Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edward Said and the Gravity of History, edited with Keith Ansell-Pearson and Judith Squires, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Singh, Amritjit, and Bruce G. Johnson, editors, Interviews with Edward W. Said, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2004.

Sprinker, Michael, editor, Edward Said: A Critical Reader, Blackwell, 1993.

Xu, Ben, Situational Tensions of Critic-Intellectuals: Thinking through Literary Politics with Edward W. Said and Frank Lentricchia, P. Lang (New York, NY), 1992.

periodicals

Antioch Review, spring, 2000, Grace A. Epstein, review of Out of Place: A Memoir, p. 244.

Atlantic, September, 2003, Christopher Hitchens, "Where the Twain Should Have Met," p. 153.

Booklist, July, 2001, Mary Carroll, review of Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said, p. 1975; February 1, 2001, Mary Carroll, review of Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, p. 1035.

Canadian Journal of Law and Society, spring, 2002, Mikhael Elbaz, review of Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, pp. 190-191.

Christian Century, July 19, 2000, Marc H. Ellis, review of End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, p. 762; November 15, 2003, James M. Wall: "Patriot Act: Two Giants for Justice Leave behind a Legacy of Activism and Patriotism," p. 45.

Commentary, August, 1989, Edward Alexander, "Professor of Terror," p. 49; September, 1999, Justus Reid Weiner, "'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications by Edward Said," p. 23; April, 2004, p. 21.

Grand Street, spring, 2002, "Daniel Barenboim and Edward W. Said: A Dialogue," pp. 46-59.

Hudson Review, winter, 2002, Bruce Bawer, "Edward W. Said, Intellectual," p. 620.

Israel Studies, fall, 2000, Alon Confino, "Remembering Talbiyah: On Edward Said's Out of Place," p. 182.

Journal of Palestine Studies, spring, 2000, Ahdaf Soueif, review of Out of Place, p. 90; winter, 2002, Amr G. E. Sabet, "Focus on Edward Said," p. 86.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2000, review of Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, p. 1667.

Library Journal, July, 2001, review of Power, Politics, and Culture, p. 111.

Middle East, February, 2002, Fred Rhodes, review of Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, p. 41.

Modern Language Quarterly, March, 2003, p. 97.

Nation, March 24, 1979, p. 309; March 22, 1980, Eqbal Ahmad, review of The Question of Palestine, p. 341; January 10, 1987, Lesley Hazelton, review of After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, p. 21; March 22, 1993, John Leonard, review of Culture and Imperialism, p. 383; September 20, 1993, pp. 269-270; February 14, 1994, pp. 190-193; September 8-15, 1997; September 20, 1999, Christopher Hitchens, "The Commentary School of Falsification," p. 9; December 20, 1999, Ammiel Alcalay, "Stop-Time in the Levant," p. 23.

National Review, April 26, 1993; August 9, 1999, David Pryce-Jones, "Corruption of the Best," p. 45.

New Criterion, January, 1999, Keith Windschuttle, "Edward Said's Orientalism Revisited," p. 30.

New Republic, November 29, 1975, p. 31; November 27, 1976, p. 29; December 15, 1979, p. 34; November 7, 1994, Michael Walzer, review of Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures, p. 38.

New Statesman, January 15, 1988, David Gilmour, review of Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, p. 36.

New Statesman and Society, February 12, 1993, Paul Gilroy, review of Culture and Imperialism, pp. 46-47; March 3, 1994.

New York, January 23, 1989, p. 41; September 27, 1999, Emily Eakin, "Look Homeward, Edward," p. 48.

New York Review of Books, March 8, 1979, p. 27; June 12, 1980, Terrence Smith, review of The Question of Palestine, p. 42; May 27, 1982, Clifford Geertz, review of Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World,, p. 25; June 24, 1982, Anthony Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism," p. 49; January 19, 1984, Irvin Enrenpreis, review of The World, the Text, and the Critic, p. 37.

New York Times, December 1, 1978, p. C25; January 4, 1980, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Question of Palestine, p. C20; March 9, 1993, Michiko Kakutani, review of Culture and Imperialism, p. C18.

New York Times Book Review, February 18, 1979, p. 3; January 20, 1980, Nicholas Bethell, review of The Question of Palestine, p. 7; July 26, 1981, Anthony Howard, review of Covering Islam, p. 7; February 27, 1983, John Bayley, review of The World, the Text, and the Critic, p. 11; November 9, 1986, Richard Ben Cramer, review of After the Last Sky, p. 27; February 28, 1993, Michael Gorra review of Culture and Imperialism, p. 11; June 26, 1994, David K. Shipler, review of The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination, 1969-1994, p. 9; October 3, 1999, Ian Buruma, "Misplaced Person," p. 10; April 16, 2000, Ethan Bronner, "Voice in the Wilderness," p. 16; February 18, 2001, Martha C. Nussbaum, "The End of Orthodoxy: For Edward Said, Exile Means a Critical Distance from all Cultural Identities," p. 28.

Progressive, January, 2001, David Barsamian, review of End of the Peace Process, p. 35.

Sociological Analysis, winter, 1981, p. 382.

Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1999, Scott Sherman, "Edward Said: A Contested History," p. 74; March 27, 2000, review of The End of the Peace Process, p. 64; July 16, 2001, review of Power, Politics, and Culture, p. 176; August 26, 2002, review of Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society, p. 52.

Spectator, March 16, 2002, Jonathan Sumption, review of Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays, p. 46.

Tikkun, March-April, 1999, Mark LeVine, "An Interview with Edward Said," p. 11.

Time, June 21, 1993, Robert Hughes, "Envoy to Two Cultures," pp. 60-61.

Times Literary Supplement, June 12, 1987, p. 629; March 11, 1988, p. 267; November 29, 1991, p. 8.

Voice Literary Supplement, March, 1983, p. 17.

Washington Post, March 7, 1993, p. 1; October 26, 1999, John Lancaster, "Origin of an Outspoken Palestinian: Edward Said's Memoir Reveals the Personal Life behind the Political," p. C1.

Washington Post Book World, December 31, 1978, p. G7; September 18, 1988, p. 9.

World Literature Today, winter, 2000, Issa J. Boullata, review of Out of Place, p. 252.